Conventionally, telephone calls, including voice calls, fax transmissions, and data transmissions between computers, are carried over circuit switched telephone networks. Circuit switched telephone networks provide a very reliable switched path between endpoints. However, the cost of telephone calls over circuit switched telephone networks over more than short distances, particularly long-distance and international calling, is very significant.
One solution that has been proposed is providing telephone connections via packet-switched networks, such as the Internet. In packet-switched networks, messages are broken into individual packets, which are separately transmitted over the network to a destination. Alternative pricing schemes are available in such networks.
In techniques for telephony over packet-switched networks, a telephone call is initiated at a computer, or at a telephone device and then transmitted to a computer. The computer then sends messages over the packet-switched network to a receiving server. The receiving server forms a telephone connection to a receiving telephone device. For example, the initiating telephone device and server may be in one country, and the receiving server and receiving telephone device located in a second country. The inventors have noted that there is a risk that unauthorized parties may employ the second server to complete their telephone calls over the packet-switched network.
A system may provide more than one server that is capable of completing a call to a destination telephone number. The gateway that originates the call may not have current information available to determine which of those servers would be most efficient to use to complete the call.